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Campaign Manager 2008 challenges players to develop a winning political strategy within the tumultuous context of the 2008 presidential campaign. Employing a new take on card driven game systems, each player will create a unique deck that represents their advice to their candidate. The players will struggle to influence voters in the critical swing states from this election, while targeting key constituencies that just might put them over the top. Players will try to define the key issue in the states. Will McCain dominate the national security debate, or can Obama play on people's fears over the economy? As the campaign manager of a national presidential campaign, you will either identify the road to the White House, or the road to irrelevance.
User review: The object of the game (and it is a game, not a simulation) is to lead your candidate, John McCain or Barack Obama, to victory by getting 270 electoral votes. Twenty battleground states are up for grabs in this game of cardplay.
Each player has a deck of forty five Campaign Strategy cards; only fifteen can be used in the game. (The rules suggest a selected fifteen cards for novices.) Each player also has a deck of ten battleground state tiles. Each player will select two of their states to put into play. (again, the rules make a suggestion for novices.)
In turn, a player either plays a card from one's own hand and follows the instructions on it or draws a card if fewer than five are already held.
To win a state, a player must get complete support from the state's voters in the issue which has more support of the people. Each state also has two key demographics. A shift in which demographic takes precidence also may affect the effect of a player's cards.
Some cards require players to go "negative." These cards require the opponent to roll a die and the result may give the opponent an unintended benefit.
Whenever a player wins a state, the electoral votes are added to that candidate's tally. A state is brought into play by the winning manager and chance card is put into effect.
The game is over when one manager scores 270 electoral votes. That player is the winner. A tie, resulting in winner, is possible.
- Topical at the time of the 2008 election.
- Not that fun after a few plays.
- Gets very samey very quickly.
- Has a weird mechanic where it feels like you're just going through the motions.
- Political campaign management
- 2008 US Presidential Election
- 1960
- Twilight Struggle
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area Control (Electoral Votes) — Players compete for electoral votes represented by cards.
- Card-Driven Political Game — Uses cards to represent issues and actions in a political campaign.
- Deck Building (Personal) — Players use their own decks of cards.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I played a lot with this expansion for dominion I think this was probably the third expansion for dominion
- Ascension was kind of my jam I actually played Ascension right around the same time as dominion because Ascension really what kind of brought me back into the hobby like full full steam ahead
- Rune Wars this is a game I played once and I really liked it and we played it four player and one of my friends absolutely hated it
- This big bulky fantasy flight game which they just don't really make anymore at all these days
- I will say for me Race for the Galaxy I like it with the first two expansions probably once you add in some of this other stuff like scoring prestige and stuff it's cool but I just haven't played it enough with that extra stuff and there's already a lot going on
- there's something about cards I think that are really kind of interesting thing that was very present in this time period
- so this is what people are excited about so I'm just gonna kind of extrapolate my theory onto that